Inlet on the coast of British Columbia, Canada
Douglas Channel[1] is one of the principal inlets of the British Columbia Coast. Its official length from the head of Kitimat Arm, where the aluminum smelter town of Kitimat to Wright Sound, on the Inside Passage ferry route, is 90 km (56 mi). The actual length of the fjord's waterway includes waters between there and the open waters of the Hecate Strait outside the coastal archipelago, comprising another 60 km (37 mi) for 140 km (87 mi)in total.
Geography
The Kitimat River flows into the Kitimat Arm portion of Douglas Channel. The channel is named in honour of Sir James Douglas, the first governor of the Colony of British Columbia.[2]
A major side-inlet, the Gardner Canal, is 90 km (56 mi) in length, and is accessed from the Kitimat Arm of Douglas Channel via Devastation Channel (20 km, 12 mi), which is on the east side of Hawkesbury Island. South of Hawkesbury is Varney Passage (40 km, 25 mi), which has a sidechannel, Ursula Passage (30 km, 19 mi). Total waterway length of the fjord dominated by Douglas Channel is therefore, not counting smaller side-inlets, 320 km (200 mi), longer than Norway's Sognefjord (203 km, 126 mi) and rivalling Greenland's Scoresby Sound at 350 km (220 mi), though not as long as nearby Dean Channel's total of 335 km (208 mi).
Industry
Douglas Channel is a busy shipping artery because of the methanol import terminal (formerly methanol production and export) and the aluminum smelter at Kitimat, as bauxite must be shipped in and smelted aluminum shipped out. Expansions of the Port of Kitimat have increased the port capacity of the British Columbia's North Coast and decreased the shipping monopoly of the nearby city, Prince Rupert.[3]
The methanol production and export plant closed in 2006.[4]
Douglas Channel will be subject to new sensitive ship traffic when the LNG Canada natural gas storage and liquefaction terminal is completed and operational, which is estimated to be in 2025. The project, led by an liquefied natural gas (LNG) subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell and several Asian partners and finally approved on October 1, 2018, will see large LNG carrier ships loading liquefied natural gas at the future Kitimat LNG terminal, to carry it to export destinations, mainly in Asia.
The Gardner Canal is important for being the location of the Kemano Generating Station of the Nechako Diversion, which was built to supply power for Kitimat. The head of the Gardner Canal, also, is the mouth of the Kitlope River, a major wildlife and wilderness preserve and area of outstanding natural beauty and harsh weather.
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